The Long Shot
by Susan Hillwig
Summary: From DC2!  When you're trapped in the past, you'll try just about any scheme to get back home.  Vigilante thinks he's found a good one that'll get him rescued from the Old West, but will it work out the way he planned?


_Not much to say about this story, other than it was rather amusing to write, plus it was another opportunity to show off the modern links to the events in WWQ. I'm never gonna let you long-underwear types forget those that came before you!_

_**Disclaimer:**__ All characters in this story are owned by DC Comics._

_**Continuity:**__ This story takes place after "Mending Fences", and originally appeared on the DC2 fanficiton site as part of Weird Western Spectacular #1. For a link, please click on my homepage under my profile._

**THE LONG SHOT**

_**1877:**_

The noise downstairs was barely perceptible, but it was enough to rouse Mayor Carmichael. He'd been sleeping lightly to begin with, thoughts of tomorrow's ceremony pressing upon him just enough to prevent a fully restful night. So when the wood-on-wood squeal echoed up the stairs, he immediately sat up in bed, eyes wide in the dark. He wife was still sleeping soundly beside him, and Carmichael supposed at first that the noise must be the maid moving about, but he couldn't fathom what she'd be doing at such a late hour. _Perhaps I imagined it_, he thought, and laid back down, but his curiosity would not let him rest. With a whispered curse, Carmichael got out of bed and padded into the hall.

There was a lit oil lamp near the stairs, the flame turned low, and Carmichael picked it up as he headed downstairs. The light revealed nothing out of the ordinary, and he felt more than a little foolish walking about the house in his nightshirt, but he proceeded nonetheless. His persistence was rewarded as he reached the foot of the stairs, and he heard the sound of creaking floorboards coming from his study. _A robber?_ he thought, and was gripped by a wave of fear: though Mayor Carmichael may have acted like a lion when it came to running the small town of Winding Forks, he turned into an absolute coward when faced with physical confrontation. Still, this was his home, and it would do him no good at reelection time to be seen scurrying down the street in his bedclothes like a terrified spinster, especially if the perceived threat turned out to be nothing more than the maid working on some late-night dusting. But if it _was_ a robber...

With a trembling hand, Carmichael plucked a cane out of a nearby umbrella stand, then approached the study. The door was slightly ajar, with no light coming from within, lending more credence to the robber theory. _Lord, give me strength_, he thought, then took a deep breath before shoving the door open and raising the cane above his head with a shout. He rushed in, ready for anything, but to his surprise, the study was completely empty. "I _did_ imagine it," he said aloud with a grateful sigh, and lowered the cane.

A split-second later, someone came up behind him and clamped a hand over his mouth, while another hand twisted the cane out of his grip. "I've heard rampaging elephants that're quieter than you," a voice hissed in his ear. The abruptness of it all startled Carmichael so badly that he dropped the lamp, but luckily, the person behind him was quick-witted enough to let go of him and grab it before burning oil splattered all over the rug. "And you're clumsy...reckon the latter must be the cause of the former," the intruder said.

Though he was no longer being held, Carmichael was too scared to run, and instead staggered back until he fell into a conveniently-placed armchair. "W-w-what do you want from me? Who are you?" he stammered.

The light from the lamp now in the intruder's hand did little to reveal his identity: a red bandana covered the lower half of his face, and his white drover's hat was pulled low to obscure his eyes. "I ain't nobody you know, and the only thing I want is access to the Century Chest. I heard you're holdin' on to it until the ceremony tomorrow."

Carmichael's brow furrowed. "Why on Earth would you want to steal that?"

"I never said I was_ stealin'_ it, I just want y'all to pop it open for me." He hitched athumb on his belt, from which Carmichael saw a pair of sixguns hanging. Catching the growing look of fear on the mayor's face, the intruder moved his hand away from the guns and said, "I swear, I'm not gonna hurt you...I ain't that desperate yet."

He didn't fully believe what the man said, but nevertheless, Carmichael slowly got out of the chair and walked over to a large safe in the corner of his study. After a few twirls of the dial, he opened the door to reveal a heavy lead box, about eighteen inches long on either side and a foot deep. Tomorrow it would be padlocked shut in the presence of the town's top officials, then carried over to the site of the new courthouse and, amid much pomp and circumstance, placed within the hollow cornerstone. It was hoped that, one hundred years from now, future residents of Winding Forks would open it and remember those who founded their little frontier town. Right now, though, its contents could still be accessed by the present generation. "There's nothing of real value in here," Carmichael said as he opened the lid. "Just some photographs, a surveyor's map of the town, letters to future descendants...Steve Danbury over at the saloon donated a bottle of single malt Scotch..."

"I keep tellin' you, I'm not here to steal anything." The intruder reached inside his shirt, the gesture spooking Carmichael enough to make him cringe a little until he saw the intruder pull out two envelopes. "I want you to put these in with the rest of them letters, and don't tell nobody about 'em."

Carmichael shuffled the envelopes, reading what was written upon them. "What's a Justice Society?"

"It's none of your damn business, that's what it is," the intruder snapped, then turned his head away slightly. "I'm sorry...it'd take too long to explain. And even if I did, you probably wouldn't believe it. Please, just put them in there, let them get sealed up along with everything else, and maybe...maybe I'll get lucky and my friends will receive the message."

"Your friends?" Carmichael echoed. "Pardon my saying so, but you are aware that this chest isn't supposed to be opened again until the year nineteen hundred and seventy-seven?"

"Mister, that's exactly what I'm countin' on." The intruder set the oil lamp down and moved over to the window, which Carmichael realized had been pried open. Swinging his leg over the windowsill, the intruder said, "If my plan works, you'll not only be doin' me a great favor, but you'll hopefully ease the minds of a lot of people very near and dear to me. So please...put them letters in there, and stay quiet about it." With that, the intruder slipped out the window and into the darkness.

Now that his late-night visitor was gone, the mayor examined the envelopes a little closer. Each had been sealed with a blob of wax, with a thumbprint clearly impressed into it. _Odd way to make your mark_, he thought. _Must've burned like the dickens_. Like the one marked for the enigmatic "Justice Society", the other envelope was intended for a person unknown to Carmichael, and even included a New York street address. _Fellow must be mad, acting like this chest is a mail car._ He considered simply throwing the envelopes away, but if the intruder was indeed a madman, and he somehow found out...

Carmichael gulped. "Well, what harm can two more letters do?" he said aloud, and slipped the envelopes beneath the rest of the items.

* * *

_**2010:**_

"So, that's the place, huh?"

"Yep." Greg Saunders - the once and future Vigilante - stood across the street from the Winding Forks Courthouse, his white drover's hat tilted back on his head to reveal a few locks of salt-and-pepper hair. He pointed at the building and said, "See that cornerstone? The one with '1877' carved into it? That's where it should be."

"Easy-peasy." Max Crandall - who had been known two centuries ago as both Chris Maxwell and Windrunner - dug a toe into the ground as he found his footing. "Back in a second." In a flash of lightning, he ran across the street, vibrated through the building, then returned to Greg's side with a heavy lead box in his hands.

"That was five seconds, not one." Carter Hall - currently Hawkman, but formerly Nighthawk, Tom Hawkins, Strong Bow, and countless other warriors stretching all the way back to ancient Egypt - gave Max a playful poke to the chest. "You're getting slow."

"Cut me some slack, will you? This thing weighs a ton." He sounded mad, but Max was smiling when he said it. Though he'd originally been fearful of what might happen when Greg reintroduced him to Carter after all these years, he was now glad of how well it had turned out. Forgiveness had been asked for and granted, and from there, the two men had begun to reassemble a friendship that had been torn asunder 125 years before. Little expeditions like the one they were on today helped to do that, especially since it involved a third friend from those times past.

Greg pulled a couple of slim metal tools out of his pocket, saying, "Just put the dang thing down before your give yourself a hernia." With a grunt, Max set the box upon the sidewalk, and Greg knelt down in front of it. "Keep them eagle-eyes of yours peeled for trouble, will ya, Carter?"

"Don't worry," Carter replied. "If anybody asks what we're doing, we can always pretend to be three senile escapees from the local old-folks' home."

"Considerin' that our combined age would be close to four hundred years, I'd say that story isn't too far-fetched." Greg slipped the tools into the keyhole and worked them about in an effort to pick the lock. "Of course, compared to you two, I'm practically a spring chicken."

Max sniffed. "Oh, you're real funny. Next time you need to break into someplace, don't call me."

"Like I'd ever leave you out of the fun." A rusty snap came from inside the padlock, and Greg pulled it off. "Okay, time to see if that man was true to his word." He carefully opened the box, then sifted about the papers until he found the two envelopes, now brittle and yellow with age. "Fat lot of good this scheme did me," he said, shaking his head.

"It was a good idea, though," Carter said, kneeling down next to him to look inside the box. "If this time capsule had been opened in 1977 like they'd planned, I'm sure somebody would've hunted down a JSA member and given them the letter, HUAC blacklisting or not."

"Yeah...but it's just my luck these yahoos forgot all about the thing." Greg gestured towards the courthouse. "Betcha we could walk off with this whole chest and none of 'em would ever miss it."

"We could," Max mused, "or I could run into the building and drop it off in the middle of the lobby before they even know I'm there. Better late than never, right?"

Greg looked over at him, and a grin spread across his face. "Sure, why not?" he said, then he reached into the Century Chest and pulled out the bottle of Scotch. "This stays with us, though."

There were no objections to that, so Greg popped the padlock back onto the box, then Max took it back across the street, this time heading up the courthouse steps. About eight seconds after he'd returned to his friends, a commotion could be heard coming from inside the building. "They'll be scratching their heads over this one for a good long time, I bet," Max said.

"And it serves them right," Greg said as the three of them began to walk away from the courthouse. "Those who forget the past are doomed to have it dropped in their laps."

"I don't think that's how the saying goes," Carter said.

"True, but I'm pretending to be senile, remember? Oh, and by the way..." He held out one of the envelopes. "Here you go, Mr. Former Chairman. Only thirty-three years late."

Carter took it and said, "Remind me to complain to the Postmaster General."

"What did you write, anyways?" Max asked. "'Help, I'm stuck in the Old West, come rescue me'?"

"I considered that," Greg answered, "but since I didn't even know if that was possible, I decided to stick with lettin' everybody know that I was okay, and that I was happy for the most part. I'd been there for two years by that point, so I talked 'bout what had happened to me so far, and how I missed everyone...to be honest, it gets a little maudlin."

"Well, for what it's worth, I'm glad they didn't open that chest," Max told him. "Because if they had, then you might've gotten rescued not long after you wrote it in 1877...which means that you and I would've never met in 1880."

Carter nodded, adding, "Not to mention you wouldn't have been around to back me up when I tangled with the Iron Pistolero. That was 1878, if I recall correctly."

"Yeah, it was, wasn't it?" Greg shrugged. "Guess even bad things happen for good reasons."

"I guess they do," Max said. "What about the other letter? Who was that for?"

"That's for Stuff, and it's between me and him. Reckon maybe I'll give it to him on his birthday...along with a certain bottle of single malt Scotch."

There were some groans of disappointment from the other two men at that declaration, but they were only in jest. It didn't really matter that much to them, not after all the things they'd seen and done together. Later that day, as the sun went down, they would sit in Greg's living room with some fine liquor - probably not as old, but still good - and talk about those things, about places and people that none of their other friends were even aware of, because they belonged to another time...one that now existed only in fragile documents, weathered buildings, and the memories of three very old men.

**THE END**


End file.
